FLYERS: Snider gives his general manager a vote of confidence

PHILADELPHIA — Just after pulling the cover off a piece of the precious past Saturday, Flyers chairman Ed Snider painfully pondered the present state of his team. What he didn’t do was issue any threats.

Rather than fire from the lip at the principals of his vastly underachieving team, Snider’s reaction to the all-but mathematically confirmed reality of missing the playoffs was a vote of confidence in his general manager, Paul Holmgren. With a targeted clarification, of course.

“I’m going to sit down with the general manager and we’re going to evaluate everything and discuss it,” Snider said before he sat down and was pleased to be offered a 3-1 Flyers victory over the Boston Bruins. “Paul Holmgren will make the calls. He’s the GM ... I don’t tell him what to do. If I had to tell him what to do, then I should be general manager.”

It only seemed natural, then, to ask Snider if he was certain Holmgren would indeed be the general manager beyond this season.

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“Of course,” Snider said. But he declined to discuss the status of anyone else’s job, including head coach Peter Laviolette. That and any and all possible player moves would likely be part of the agenda for the postseason meeting.

Snider was speaking after a ceremonial unveiling of yet another new statue outside of the Xfinity Live chaos complex. This one, called “Walk Together Forever,” depicts Bernie Parent and Bobby Clarke raising their first Stanley Cup. That bronzed memory from May 19, 1974 is said to represent the back to back Cup championships.

To most of today’s fans, it only represents the past. It’s nearly 40 years ago, you chanting Flyers fans. Ironic that it seems so much farther away now?

“It’s been really tough,” Snider said. “We came into the season with high expectations and it just seems like everything that could go wrong has gone wrong. But the good teams overcome that and we’ve got to find a way to regroup, and I guarantee you we’ll be a heck of a lot better.”

“We’re in a really tough spot, but we want to look at the whole thing when the season’s over.”

For the record, Snider’s various general managers have frequently made changes after postseason meetings such as those, both in the coaches office and the locker room. And that was usually after the Flyers made the playoffs.

For his part, Holmgren didn’t alter from that offseason decision plan. But he continued to voice support for Laviolette and his many layered coaching staff.

“You’ve asked me that before,” Holmgren said during the game. “Nobody’s happy with the position we’re in. Nobody. Players, coaches, anybody. So it’s difficult. And it’s difficult to talk about stuff like that right now. I think the coaches do a good job. And they’re trying to prepare their team the best they can.”

Told that several of his players have talked about the team not being prepared before games, Holmgren promptly said, “Talk’s cheap, you know?

“They’re the ones that have to play the game,” Holmgren said. “I try not to read a lot of that stuff, but based on what you just said to me, it sounds like they’re pointing at each other. They are the ones that play the game. I don’t think they mean they’re not prepared from a coaching standpoint. I believe they are.”

No matter how hard any coach or player has tried to prepare for games in this shortened season, it’s obvious the Flyers weren’t prepared to play up to expectations coming out of the lockout. Someone will take the fall for that, whomever or whoever remains to be seen.

“You always hope that you’re going to get it together, but look at our record,” Snider said. “We haven’t won one game where we were behind 1-0 after the first period or something like that. We haven’t had more than a two-game winning streak all year. I mean, it’s been a disappointment the entire season. Let’s hope that we can change it suddenly and some miracle will happen and we win all the remaining games.”

From the time he said that, it’s one win down, and, um, 14 to go? ...

“I’m not giving up,” Snider said. “But you have to be realistic and look at what we’ve accomplished so far. We have to do an awful lot to change that pattern. ... We are where we are because we deserve to be there.”

If it were up to him ... and of course, it is ... Snider apparently would want nothing to do with using a compliance buyout, better known as the “amnesty clause” written into the new collective bargaining agreement, to rid himself of goalie Ilya Bryzgalov.

“I don’t think Bryzgalov has been the problem,” Snider said. “I mean, he’s had to face so many breakaways and 2-on-1s where we turn over the puck suddenly. I think it’s the team. I think we’re fine in goal.”

Despite the Flyers’ ridiculous even-strength scoring inadequacies this year, both Snider and Holmgren pointed out that injuries to their defense — starting with the career loss of Chris Pronger well over a year ago — has combined, in their view, to knock the team off course. It’s too great a problem and too late to fix it for this season, anyway.

“It’s highly unlikely we’d be in a position to go after a rental player,” Holmgren said. “If we win the next two games, could it change? Maybe. But you’ve got to look at the long-term too.”

The long-term is bleak unless the Flyers can somehow win a battle off the ice. You know, like the bidding war battles they lost for Ryan Suter, Zach Parise and finally Shea Weber last July, or the one that went on this week for college free agent defender Danny DeKeyser.

That search for a viable, two-way defenseman was called “a never-ending quest” by Holmgren.

“Maybe you have to draft one,” he said. And maybe you do, if you’re willing to wait a few more years for such a guy to develop.

Of course, there usually isn’t enough time for that.

“I don’t want to talk about anything about when the season ends, who’s safe and who isn’t safe,” Snider said. “These are decisions Paul Holmgren is going to have to make, not me.”